Taliban suicide bomber kills 11 in Pakistan

ByLiam StackMarch 26, 2009

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.

A Taliban suicide bomber in Pakistan's restive northwest killed at least 11 members of a rival, pro-government militant group on Thursday. The attack highlights the complicated divisions among militant groups operating in Pakistan, some of which receive support from the government or the powerful intelligence agency.

The bomber killed at least 11 people and wounded 20 others, most of them members of a militant faction opposed to Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. South Waziristan is a stronghold of Mr. Mehsud's movement.

The bomber struck at a hotel in the busy Jandola Bazar in Tank district of Dera Ismail Khan, as scores of anti-Taliban militants sat down for their meals, TV channels quoted officials as saying.

Officials said the roadside restaurant's visitors at the time included some two dozen militants opposed to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. They were members of the 'Turkestan Bittani' group. However, their leader was not in the group.

US and Pakistani forces have turned up the heat on Mehsud, killing seven Arab militants in a South Waziristan drone attack on Wednesday, as well as putting a $5 million bounty on his head, the news service reports.

Meanwhile, in the adjoining region of North Waziristan, intelligence officials said four people were killed after a suspected US drone aircraft fired two missiles into a house outside the town of Mir Ali.

"Two missiles fired from a suspected US drone hit the compound of a local pro-militant tribal elder Malik Gulab Khan, killing four residents," a local security official told the AFP news agency.

But as the US tries to tighten the noose on Mehsud and the Taliban, the relationships between different militant groups and elements of the Pakistani state have proved to be a stumbling block.

In particular, there is evidence that the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, continues to maintain ties with Taliban elements currently active in southern Afghanistan, reports The New York Times. In the past, ISI has promised to sever these ties.

In a report published Wednesday, the Times identifies the S Wing of the Pakistani intelligence service as the source of "money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders" who are fighting international forces in southern Afghanistan.

Little is publicly known about the ISI's S Wing, which officials say directs intelligence operations outside Pakistan. American officials said that the S Wing provided direct support to three major groups carrying out attacks in Afghanistan: the Taliban based in Quetta, Pakistan, commanded by Mullah Muhammad Omar; the militant network run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; and a different group run by the guerrilla leader Jalaluddin Haqqani.

The Times quotes Congressional testimony by Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, who says Pakistan "draws distinctions" between militant groups useful to the Islamabad regime and those that threaten it.

On the one hand are groups like the Haqqani network, which bombed India's Kabul embassy last summer. It is considered "a strategic asset" to Pakistan, says the Times, and as such its operations in Afghanistan have received ISI support. That is in sharp contrast to Baitullah Mehsud's Taliban, which seeks to overthrow the government of Pakistan.